Hurry
by Corvis Greenleaf
Summary: Two elves contemplate the pitfalls of living in a different time. Kinda fluffy. AU, written as a vignette for another story.


**Hurry**

"Do you know how hard it is to be with you?" He asked, rising slowly from the bed we woke on and walking to the other side of the room.

"Excuse me?" I asked, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and rolling over to look at the clock. "That's a great way to say good morning."

He paused for a moment, holding a much needed glass of water in his hand, offering it to me. I gulped it down, also drinking in the sight of him as he stood against the morning light coming in. He tilted his head and seemed to try to find the words he was looking for. It seemed to take longer than usual.

"I meant no offense." He said. I grinned and he caught it, a glimmer in his eye before he was all sober again. "I meant how hard it is to live in this time, with you."

I laid back against the pillows and waited for him to continue. This was something that he didn't talk about often, and for good reason. Leaving a way of life, your own people, everything you knew behind, well, I could understand that it was a hard thing for him to talk about. I didn't press. He paused again, this time taking a sip of the glass he had handed to me.

"Time passes so fast here. I cannot help but notice the passage of time. Trees grow, they wither and die, people age, they wither and die. Death is all around us, but we pass through it, unscathed by the years and the elements. What is a lifetime to them, is merely a flash to us. And yet we live in it, get involved in it, become part of it." He laid down next to me on his side and rested his head on the fan of my hair on the pillow.

"Do you regret anything?" I asked. It was a fear I had, thinking that he had made the wrong choice, that he was not meant to be here.

"No." He said, honestly thinking about the question. He never told me things because he simply thought that was what I wanted to hear. Even when sometimes I wished he did. "I have no regret. I only wonder what we are to become." He sighed heavily and his hand reached out for mine. "To think that you might have been simply a flash of time, passed by. I will never regret the decisions I have made. Will you?" He asked.

I thought for a long time. He wouldn't be offended by my hesitation. "No." I looked into his dark eyes and smiled. "No. It was a gift, and I cherish it."

"But you will have to watch everything around you perish." He said, and I could see his eyes darken further with empathy. I pulled him closer.

"But I will not be alone." I said, and I meant it. It was going to be sad, I knew that as well as he did. But sadness was not overwhelming when it was shared. He nodded.

"What will become of us?" He asked. It was a question that neither of us had the answer to, and for good reason. Time changed things, and what one thought was so right could change in an instant.

"We will stay. As we are meant to. And we will watch. Watch over them, and their children, and their children's children, I suppose. We made a promise." I said, looking to his eyes. He nodded.

"What of our children?" He whispered.

"Their fate has yet to be decided. But we will deal with that when the time comes." I said, and he gave a roguish grin. I laughed, grateful that I could feel the tension seeping out of him. It was like a waterfall, his relief, and he pulled me closer.

"I used to be so scared." He confided. I scoffed. He gave me a disdainful look. "I was. Before I knew you were going to stay." He rose above me and leaned over me, pushing the hair away from my face and leaning down to kiss me. His lips met mine and had barely parted when he continued to talk.

"I would think that I had but a mortal lifetime with you, and my heart felt so heavy. I thought that it was not nearly enough time to show you all the ways I cherished you." His words were punctuated with light kisses that now trailed down my neck. I rested my hands on his shoulders, always marveling the strength that was beneath the skin.

"I despaired that the moments I shared with you seemed like hours, but were naught more than a blink of the eye." He continued, now hovering over me, raising his head to look into my eyes. "It was not enough time." He said it with such force, yet so quietly that I nearly lost my breath.

He sighed and resumed his ministrations. I put my hands up and ran them through his hair. Gently, I started to untangle the braids that held his hair back, wanting to see it spill out over me. He shuddered as my fingers brushed along the edge of his perfect leaf shaped ear.

"I was reminded of a warning I was given during my travels." I paused, remembering the call, the want for the sea and sail, knowing that he very well would have left. I finished with his braids and felt his cool hair fall over us. I pulled him down closer, inhaling his scent, now smelling of the shore. "I almost..."

I shushed him with a finger over his lips. The eyes that met mine were different, placid and blue, flecks of green. The call was still there. A part of me knew that he should have gone, the other part was glad that he had stayed.

"I do not wish to keep you here." I ventured.

"You do not. I stay. I wish to drown in you, melamin." He said, and his lips met mine again, his hands seemed to clutch me, as a man would a drift in the sea. "You keep me here, it is at your side I belong." He gasped.

"You are the same to me." I said. He kissed me again, this time with determination to drive away the thoughts that seemed to cloud his mind. I acquiesced to him, and he pulled the sheet at the foot of the bed over us.

"Time just passes so quickly." He whispered, his hands running over me.

I grinned, watching the last of that blue seep from his eyes. "Then hurry." I said, rising up to meet him.

**End**


End file.
